Exidy

Exidy was one of the largest creators of arcade video games during the early period of video games, from 1974-1983. The company was founded by H.R."Pete" Kaufman. The name "Exidy" was a portmanteau of the words "Excellence in Dynamics."

Some of the notable games released by Exidy included "Circus", "Death Race", "Star Fire", "Venture", "Pepper II", "Mouse Trap", "Targ", and "Spectar". "Star Fire" was prominently featured in the 1980 film "Midnight Madness", while "Mouse Trap" was the subject of a song on the 1982 "Pac-Man Fever" album. Many Exidy games can be played today on personal computers using MAME arcade emulation software.

Exidy was most famous for its light gun games, beginning with the game "Crossbow". These presented an unusual twist to the genre, where the goal is to protect characters walking through the screen by shooting down bullets and other things which are trying to kill the characters. These games were also the first to feature fully digitized sound, for all sound effects and for music (far more advanced than any other games up until the 16-bit generation). The most (in)famous game today from this series is the game "Chiller". Other "C" series games include Cheyenne, Combat, Crackshot and Clay Pigeon. Chief designer for these games were Larry Hutcherson.

Exidy also made a rarely-seen motion cabinet game with vector graphics called Vertigo. Chief game designer for this game was Vic Tolomei.

Another somewhat successful game from Exidy was a driving game named "Top Secret". This game featured a spy car with advanced weaponry on a mission inside the Soviet Union to destroy a heavily-guarded Top Secret super weapon. Game designers for this game were Vic Tolomei, Larry Hutcherson and Ken Nicholson

Exidy made a brief foray into the home computer market, with the "Exidy Sorcerer". The Sorcerer was a modified S-100 bus based machine, but lacked the internal expansion system common to other S-100 systems. It made do with an S-100 expansion card-edge that could connect to an S-100 expansion cage. The Sorcerer also featured an advanced (for the era) text display that was capable of 64 characters per line, when most systems supported only 40 characters. Oddly, the Sorcerer did not support sound, color, or in some respects, graphics, which seems at odds with the company's video game background. The system was never very popular in North America, but found a following in Europe, notably Belgium.

Exidy sold off the Sorcerer computer, it's software, and assembly line to a Texas-based startup called "Dynasty Computer Corporation" by 1977 or 1978. It was relabeled and sold by "Dynasty" as the "Dynasty" Smart-Alec.

In 2006 it was announced that Mean Hamster Software acquired rights to develop new Exidy games.

External links

* [http://www.meanhamstersoftware.com/press.php Mean Hamster Exidy, Crossbow Press Release]
* [http://www.thedoteaters.com/p2_stage1.php The Dot Eaters Article] featuring a history of Death Race and Exidy

See also

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